Driven by AI/LLM bots like [1]Shashiko uncovering new issues within the Linux kernel source tree, including various security vulnerabilities like [2]Dirty Frag , the mailing list has been wild with bug reports and fixes. Today's networking fixes pull request for Linux 7.1 continues to highlight the ongoing craziness and fears that the worst may be yet to come.

Merged today was the latest batch of Linux networking subsystem fixes to address a variety of bugs. Jakub Kicinski wrote in that pull request:

"Craziness continues with no end in sight. Even discounting the driver revert this is a pretty huge PR for standards of the previous era. I'd speculate - we haven't seen the worst of it, yet. Good news, I guess, is that so far we haven't seen many (any?) cases of "AI reported a bug, we fixed it and a real user regressed".

Current release - fix to a fix:

- Bluetooth: btmtk: accept too short WMT FUNC_CTRL events

- vsock/virtio: relax the recently added memory limit a little

Current release - regressions:

- IB/IPoIB: make sure IB drivers always use async set_rx_mode since some (mlx5) are now required to use it due to locking changes

Previous releases - regressions:

- udp: fix UDP length on last GSO_PARTIAL segment

- af_unix: fix UAF read of tail->len in unix_stream_data_wait()

- tcp: fix stale per-CPU tcp_tw_isn leak enabling ISN prediction

- mlx5e: fix unlocked writing to ICOSQ, breaking AF_XDP

Previous releases - always broken:

- tap: fix stack info leak in tap_ioctl() SIOCGIFHWADDR

- ipv4: raw: reject IP_HDRINCL packets with ihl < 5

- Bluetooth: a lot of locking and concurrency fixes (as always)

- batman-adv (mesh wireless networking): a lot of random fixes for issues reported by security researchers and Sashiko

- netfilter: same thing, a lot of small security-ish fixes all over the place, nothing really stands out

Misc:

- bring back the old 3c509 driver, Maciej wants to maintain it"

Wild times ahead with the Linux AI/LLM usage only continuing to ramp up.

The 3com 3c509 driver was [3]dropped as part of the Linux 7.1 networking code removals but now making a comeback thanks to having a user and willing maintainer.

The full list of Linux networking fixes merged today for Linux 7.1 can be found via [4]this Git merge .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Sashiko

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/search/Dirty+Frag

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.1-Removes-Old-Net

[4] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=68993ced0f618e36cf33388f1e50223e5e6e78cc